Over the last 40-50 years, Marquette University has slowly but surely migrated away from its former "Catholic" identification; currently, it's a "Catholic, Jesuit" university although recently it was a "Catholic university in the Jesuit tradition." Perhaps you can tell us the difference.
The school has had its share of controversy in its Theology department, notably Daniel Maguire (ex-Jesuit heretic), but he was only the most obvious (and noisy) dissenter; eventually a group of faculty, staff, and students was formed to discuss the situation. It is also the case that Marquette has had events concerning sexuality which were suspiciously lacking in forthright, two-fisted Catholic doctrine defenders. A very good, contemporaneous but very UN-official history of Marquette's vagaries can be found at The Warrior's blog.
As to the <i>Quo Vadis?</i> in the title, we have this:
Marquette University has been rocked with controversy over budget cuts and faculty layoffs. The impact of COVID-19 and a projected decline in future student enrollment due to a declining birthrate have been used to justify dramatic cuts, as a story published by Urban Milwaukee reported. Faculty layoffs for next school year were projected to be as high as 225. Today the number has dropped to 39, but the changes may be more sweeping than the mere number of faculty.
The Marquette community is beginning to believe the justifications for budget cuts just don’t add up. Marquette will run a budget surplus next year, perhaps greater than the proposed cuts. Critics believe Marquette’s leadership is using the crisis as an opportunity to restructure the university while blaming the pandemic....
"Restructure"? What does that mean?
According to some who are quoted in the article, it's possible that Marquette will ditch its Liberal Arts programs to concentrate on S.T.E.M. and Bus.Ad. offerings which is (supposedly) where the money is.
...While cuts are being made in the humanities and liberal arts, the administration is planning for increases in nursing, business, and other technical fields. The long-term plan for Marquette may not be to shrink the university at all, just realign it. Administration may believe enrollment is a zero-sum situation: If the university increases technical fields, it must cut elsewhere....
Naturally, the Administration is not talking.
We know that college and university professors are generally filled with insecurity complexes and are inclined to ferociously lobby (in public and in private) for their departments--translated 'their own jobs.' So what is reported may be the typical jostling.
What WOULD be nice, however, would be a "restructuring" in which Marquette emphasizes lights such as Thomas Aquinas, Bellarmine, Chesterton, Augustine, and Maritain, which defines "social justice" completely, not in today's cramped, silly, materialist-racist terms, and which obviously, loudly, and repeatedly subscribes to the actually-Catholic doctrines on sexuality, not "gender."
Otherwise, the question "Where are you going" could be answered by "Who cares?"
1 comment:
The humanities were going to get cut anyway. Eventually, there weren't going to be any more suckers paying $50,000 a year for a degree that doesn't translate into a job. So, in some ways, this is unexpected.
A development at Marquette that wasn't happening 15 years ago when I was there was the influx of Asian students, similar to the UW campuses. Marquette needs to artificially inflate the demand in order to keep tuition high. Does that continue going forward?
Some of the documents released by faculty last year were pretty interesting. They actually spelled out all of the lavish spending on the bureaucracy. It confirmed what I've thought since attending, that Marquette has one of the worst bureaucracies relative to other major academic institutions.
For example, executive compensation as a percent of budget is something like top ten in the country.
Marquette has long been a community of suckers, run by charlatans and scam artists who know they have an easy mark. The political philosophy of the scammers has been kind of secondary, akin to a Bill Clinton.
There is also an incredible inferiority complex of admin and to a lesser extent faculty that one might need to attend to understand. Every last one of them wishes they were and thinks they belong at Notre Dame or Georgetown.
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